Scope Bacon Fools America — Captures Attention of One Show

Bacon Flavored Mouthwash A Delicious & Highly Successful Hoax

NEW YORK CITY, NY (April 2, 2013) – Publicis Kaplan Thaler and Scope mouthwash teamed up to pull off the best April’s fools prank in recent memory. The hoax was so successful, it landed on The One Club’s Newsfeeder.com, a website that showcases the most creative Facebook page posts made by brands. Newsfeeder enables creatives to search through a repository of curated Facebook page posts by a number of categories, including agency, brand, most recent, most comments, most likes and most shares.

Created by The One Club, with strategic partnership and technical assistance from Facebook Studio, Newsfeeder’s goal is to highlight the best work of those influencing this relatively new, but impactful medium. Newsfeeder is also a forum for creative professionals to view and comment on the best work being shared across social media’s biggest stage. Newsfeeder leverages the growing influence Facebook page posts have on brands and, consequently, the creative community.

Scope Bacon’s story began on March 29th of this year with one, simple Facebook post. It was a picture of a red, bacon flavored Scope bottle and the headline read “Indulge your meat tooth.” It also included the Twitter hashtag #scopebacon. That one post garnered over 30,000 likes and over 11,000 comments; an astronomical amount for a mouthwash brand. America was interested.

The first Facebook post was immediately followed by a heavy dose of this television commercial produced by Publicis Kaplan Thaler:

Several more Facebook posts leading up to April 1st. Media outlets from across the country began debating whether this product was real or fake. The earned publicity was widespread and people were doing exactly what Scope wanted; they were talking about the brand.

When April 1st rolled around Scope revealed via Facebook that the bacon flavored product was indeed a hoax and that much of America had been duped. Reactions ranged from sheer delight to crushed disappointment from some of Scope’s customers who are bacon enthusiasts. Regardless, Scope was in the headlines of major news outlets and the social media sphere was ablaze with responses. The prank was even covered by NBC’s Nightly News.

By pranking their very own customers, Scope has epitomized their new mantra “Courage Encouraged” and successfully moved their brand one step closer to becoming the industry leader.

About Publicis Kaplan ThalerPublicis Kaplan Thaler is a fully integrated advertising agency with digital, social and technology at its core. With over 650 employees, it is the flagship of Publicis Worldwide in the USA, the North American operating unit of Publicis Worldwide, the largest global agency network within Publicis Groupe. The Agency’s blue-chip client roster includes: Procter & Gamble, CITI, Nestlé, Merck, Pfizer, TriHonda, Wendy’s, L’Oréal, AFLAC, and NAPA Auto Parts, among others. To learn more about Publicis Kaplan Thaler, follow @PKTtweets, like on Facebook or visit pkt.com.

About Procter & GambleP&G serves approximately 4.6 billion people around the world with its brands. The Company has one of the strongest portfolios of trusted, quality, leadership brands, including Pampers®, Tide®, Ariel®, Always®, Whisper®, Pantene®, Mach3®, Bounty®, Dawn®, Fairy®, Gain®, Charmin®, Downy®, Lenor®, Iams®, Crest®, Oral-B®, Duracell®, Olay®, Head & Shoulders®, Wella®, Gillette®, Braun®, Fusion®, Ace®, Febreze®, Ambi Pur®, SK-II®, and Vicks®. The P&G community includes operations in approximately 75 countries worldwide. Please visit P&G for the latest news and in-depth information about P&G and its brands.